Pride vs Love
Pride replaces "love" with "sex," but they aren't identical.
July, 2025
Another "Pride" month expires and reminds us of the intense cultural shift surrounding homosexuality. This change has come not only in acceptance, but in how people argue for their views. Applying broad conclusions to narrow subjects is a key component of "propaganda:" selective and leading messaging. It's become the default method of argument on many topics. When it comes to sexuality, the common propaganda term is "love." Who could be against love? Why is love wrong? Love wins! Responding to these phrases can be challenging. A common struggle for modern believers sounds something like this:
I don't understand why we should frown upon homosexuality. I've known some gay couples and they appeared to be truly in love. How can I condemn true love?
We should appreciate this question and the difficulty which modern culture adds to it. Yet believers also need to be fair and precise in our discussions. The more charged the topic, the more important discernment becomes. With that in mind, consider the variations of the above statement. They're extreme, and offensive, which is the point: to show a weakness in how we often approach this topic. I'm not agreeing with these ideas or putting those claims in anyone's mouth. The purpose is merely to demonstrate why this strategy falls apart.
Consider how you'd react to someone who said this:
"I don't understand why we should frown upon bestiality (sex with animals). I've known some persons who appeared truly in love with their pets. How can I condemn true love?"
Or…
"I don't understand why we should frown upon pedophilia (sex with underage children). I've known some older men truly in love with toddlers. How can I condemn true love?"
The natural response to these modified statements is "no, that's totally different." That reaction isn't incorrect—in fact, it's the point! Applying the word "love" does not instantly make everything worthy of endorsement. Words like "love" have a context. Just because we can rightly speak of "love" in one circumstance, and associate it with certain things, does not mean we can slap that term on all other circumstances with the same associations. Crucially, we need to realize when a concept is irrelevant to the question at hand. Of course, there can be "love" in virtually any relationship arrangement. But that, alone, doesn't make it moral.
The critical issue in these discussions is not the emotions of love: admiration, intimacy, affection, support, friendship, and so forth. The issue is the physical act of sex. Nothing in the Bible says people of the same gender cannot have loving, supportive, close, dependent, joyous relationships with one another. It says they should not have sex with each other. We can say the same of people and animals, or adults and children.
Modern culture tries to smuggle in irrationality by inferring that "love" mandates "sex." The implication of using "love" to justify same-sex relations is that real love must include eroticism and orgasms and physical intercourse. It's bizarre to think that sex without love is considered "casual," but love without sex is considered "impossible." "Love is love" or "Love wins," in these situations, would imply that we cannot claim to "love" someone unless we're bedding them. Most would agree that's a shallow, crass, cynical caricature of "love." Yet as soon as we admit that "love" is different from sex, we admit that not all "love" is the same, and not all claims about "love" legitimize sexuality.
If we can point to certain urges and say, "those feelings are not self-validating," we cannot arbitrarily claim homosexual behaviors and attractions aren't subject to the same scrutiny. We already apply that to heterosexual impulses; we expect people not to be promiscuous, or commit adultery, or to commit rape.
Homosexual couples can be loving, caring, and supportive. Two men can unquestionably "love" each other (1 Samuel 18:1–5), but that has nothing to do with the morality of them having physical sex. That attraction is misguided and misdirected, as much as a person who "loves" a pet but inappropriately expresses affection with disordered sexuality. The Bible doesn't condemn two men caring for each other or sharing emotions and friendship, and neither should we. It's not the "love" which is a problem, it's the sexual intercourse.
That leads us to look at homosexuality from several different levels. First is the basic, "God said so" approach. Parents often restrict children from certain things, for their own good, even if the child does not understand. Employers or owners sometimes restrict employees from doing certain things. Agreement is not required for obedience in either case. Even if there was no other reason, "the Creator of the universe said not to" is morally sufficient.
Secular concepts also show that same-sex behavior is not a good thing. There's the argument from nature; the obvious fact that homosexuality defies the intended purpose of those body parts. Same-sex acts are often associated with greater risks of certain conditions, diseases, and so forth. Practicing homosexuals are statistically much more likely to also suffer from things like depression, substance abuse, domestic violence, and such—and those increased factors apply even in cultures and situations where that lifestyle is greatly celebrated. According to the basic concepts of natural selection and evolution, homosexuality is a literally fatal flaw: it completely contradicts the species' ability to survive.
We have more than "just" biblical reasons to avoid homosexual acts. We also have good philosophical and scientific reasons to recognize it as unhealthy and unhelpful. None of that has anything to do with politics—whether such things should be legal or approved—but they clearly answer whether those acts fit into a Christian worldview.
For those reasons, we should be compassionate and loving towards anyone caught in confusion. But we should also be honest. Embracing disordered feelings is no different than diving into other attitudes which contradict God's purpose for humanity (1 Corinthians 6:9–11). Despite how some seem to frame the issue, homosexuals are not in any sense "worse" than other category of sinner. They are usually decent, loving, people. Yet they're struggling with broken sexuality, and it's wrong to embrace faulty urges. We can "frown upon" that aspect of their lives the same way we might with any other person, and any other moral issue; we can disagree with someone's choices without rejecting the entire person.
--Editor
